Liberty (Liberté) by Puppies Puppies

SAT, Mar 18, 201712–4 pm

Floor Eight, Outdoor Terrace (dependent on weather)

Part of the 2017 Biennial, Liberty (Liberté) is a performance realized at different times by the artist Puppies Puppies, a performer of their choosing, or even a mannequin. The work references street performers, including the peddlers in costume who sell photo opportunities to tourists in New York. Here, Puppies Puppies has staged a re-presentation of these performances, which are often done by men dressed as the Statue of Liberty; the result can be seen as a sculpture or as a drag performance—or both.

Puppies has inhabited a variety of pop-culture icons, including Gollum, Voldemort, and SpongeBob. Through this process of shape-shifting, the artist enacts the fluidity of queer identity, drawing on both the history of drag and their own adolescent urge to blend in to normative gender contexts while growing up in Texas. Puppies traces their performance practice to high school, when serving as a lion mascot offered the solace of performing publicly while in disguise.